A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question. The relevant question is, “since God is offering you forgiveness and reconciliation in Christ, what are you going to do about it?” And the response is sometimes, “well, that may be what the Bible says, but the Bible is full of errors.”
From there, the evangelist then takes upon himself the task of supporting the assertion that the Bible is inerrant, or at least that the original autographs (in Hebrew and Greek) were, and that our English translations are true to the original and so forth. It’s a safe bet that if the evangelist hands a Bible to the skeptic and says, “show me some of these errors,” that in most cases the skeptic will be unwilling or unable to do so. Sometimes the skeptic may be prepared and will point to some of the known problems with passages such as Mark 16:9-20, John 6:4, John 8:3-11, or the alleged conflicting testimonies regarding the events on the morning of the resurrection, or perhaps of Matthew and Mark’s accounts of the raising of the 12-year-old (Matt. 9 and Mark 5).
The skeptic may even insist that science has disproved or debunked the “creation myth” and may further say that everything before Genesis chapter 12 is not historically or scientifically true.
And so forth. We’ve seen the videos, or at least most of us probably have. Men like Greg Koukl and Frank Turek respond to these challenges much better than I could, and they seem to do it effortlessly. Of course, they’ve had lots of practice. But I have a question: Where does the Bible say that it is anything beyond faithful eye-witness accounts? Oh, it does in some areas. I have no doubt at all that God gave direct knowledge to Moses, that Moses wrote exactly what God told him, and that those records have been faithfully preserved. And yes, there are corrupted versions, but some serious digging exposes the flaws that have crept in. We can know with absolute certainty that God forbids adultery, and idolatry, and theft.
But the gospels are different. Most of the New Testament is different. The gospels are central to the New Testament and Jesus is central to the gospels and all these records, old testament and new, are considered scripture. And we should be comfortable with the knowledge that scripture makes no explicit claim to inerrancy. It claims to be “God-breathed” and “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly furnished for every good work.” That, for us, should be sufficient. As J. Warner Wallace (and probably many others) pointed out, we should expect differences in separate accounts of the same events. Genuine eye-witness accounts always differ, but they are still reliable accounts. That different accounts have differences should not be at all surprising.
Gary Habermas answers these challenges to scriptural reliability with, “so what?” That’s the right answer. But don’t mis-understand: Dr. Habermas is not disparaging scripture in any way, nor am I. The claim that all scripture is “inerrant in the original autographs” is most probably true but is essentially meaningless because we don’t HAVE the originals, or any way to get them. Apparently, God decided that we don’t need them. What we have may not be perfect, but it is reliable, and it is sufficient.
The point is: arguing about so-called “discrepancies” in the scriptures and then dismissing the whole of scripture as being “unreliable” is flawed logic and often a red herring. For those who are running from the truth, any lie will do, any excuse, any distraction, any smoke screen. It behooves US, as proclaimers of truth and ambassadors for Christ to see past these distractions.
My thought on “God-breathed” – the Biblical word is “inspired.” The Greek word is theópneustos and it means “divinely breathed in.” Notice that it’s “inspire” and not “expire.” In other words, God did not “breathe out” the scriptures. Men were moved by the Holy Spirit, but it was still MEN who wrote them. What “inspire” suggests to me is that, as we say today, they “passed the (divine) sniff test.” Literally, when God “inspired” the scriptures, He breathed them in; He inhaled them. Perhaps He was enjoying their fragrance as “… holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.“
And as we know, we can all enjoy that same fragrance today. Sadly, many seem to prefer the fragrance of a “red herring” … a fish.
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